The Dictator’s Daughter

On succession in North Korea.

A note from Garry Kasparov: The Trump administration could soon launch a war with Iran without oversight or accountability. To navigate the crisis, we will need a deep understanding of America’s place in the world rather than allow ourselves to get distracted by the outrage du jour. That’s why I’m inviting our premium subscriber community to a Zoom conversation on the last half-century of American foreign policy with Edward Luce, Financial Times US editor and author of Zbig: The Life And Times of Zbigniew Brzezinsky, America’s Great Power Prophet, taking place on Wednesday, March 4 at 5pm ET/2pm PT. You can find registration details here.

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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.

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News out of Seoul, as related by the Associated Press: “South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday that it believes the teenage daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is close to being designated the country’s future leader as he moves to extend the family dynasty to a fourth generation.”

That daughter is Kim Ju-ae, who is 13. But hang on: her name may be something else, and her age may be 12 or 14. Such details—such elementary facts—are closely guarded in North Korea, the “Hermit Kingdom.”

It was from Dennis Rodman that the world heard the name “Ju-ae,” back in 2013. But he may have gotten it wrong. There are different theories on the matter. The truth is, no one knows, outside a tight circle.

Rodman is a former professional basketball star, and Kim Jong-un is crazy about basketball, as was his father, Kim Jong-il, before him. In fact, when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Kim Jong-il in 2000, she brought along a basketball signed by Michael Jordan.

Jordan’s onetime teammate, Rodman, has gone to North Korea several times, and on that one occasion, in 2013, he apparently met the dictator’s daughter.

There is speculation that the dictator has three children: one born in 2010, a boy; Kim Ju-ae (let’s call her), born in 2013 (let’s say); and another child born in 2017. That third child is of unknown sex. Then again, that child may not exist, and neither may the first.

If Kim Jong-un has a son—indeed, an eldest child who is a son—why is he not the successor? Why has he never been seen in public?

Kim Ju-ae was first seen by the public on November 18, 2022. She and the dictator had a typical daddy-daughter date: they attended a missile launch. Later, the state produced postage stamps commemorating the occasion.

In subsequent years, Kim Ju-ae has often been seen at her father’s side. She even traveled with him abroad, to Beijing, in September 2025.

If Kim Ju-ae does indeed succeed her father, she would be the first female dictator ever. Seriously, there has never been one.

You may wish to count bad queens. “Bloody Mary” acquired that nickname for a reason. A Chinese empress named Wu Zetian was a piece of work. But I am not counting queens as dictators, in the modern understanding.

Nor can you count Indira Gandhi, who ruled by emergency decree for 21 months. That was a Jeffersonian paradise, compared with the regimes we’re talking about.

Hold on a second: what about Delcy Rodríguez, whom the United States basically installed as jefe in Venezuela last month, after seizing and extracting Nicolás Maduro? We might consider her on another day…

I wrote about the Kim family, and other families, in a book called Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators (2015). Kim Il-sung, the founding North Korean, created the first communist dynasty. His counterpart in Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu, wanted to do the same, but his regime ended—along with the dictator himself—before he could pass on power to his monstrous son Nicu.

In all likelihood, Kim Il-sung did not have his heart set on a dynasty. But he saw what happened to the cult of Stalin in the Soviet Union. It was brought low. (It has since been revived.) He did not want the same to happen to his own cult. And he figured that the best way to ensure continuation of the cult was to be succeeded by a son.

Kim Jong-il was the eldest, yes. But he was not the automatic successor. He had to compete for it—against a half-brother named Pyong-il, in particular—and he was good at it.

Jong-il himself had six children, give or take. One was a daughter named Sol-song, meaning “snow pine.” The name was bestowed on her by her grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

By all accounts, Kim Jong-il was very fond of this daughter. He liked having her work alongside him. She was capable and beautiful. But she was female, and how could the next dictator be anything but a son?

Kim Jong-il passed over older sons to anoint his youngest, Kim Jong-un. This is an interesting story (and I relate it in my book). But suffice it to say, here and now, that Jong-un was really a chip off the old block: a natural, ruthless, ghastly dictator.

In Syria, Hafez al-Assad had a daughter—his eldest child, Bushra. He adored her, and she adored him, and power. She had an appetite for politics and dictatorship. Hafez included her in governmental councils, and she accompanied her father on foreign trips—as Kim Ju-ae already has.

But Bushra was … well, a girl. And Hafez had plenty of sons.

His eldest, Bassel, was a natural successor. He was a golden boy: handsome, talented, personable. His nickname was the “Golden Knight.” But Bassel was killed in a car crash in 1994, when he was 31.

That very day, Hafez summoned the next son, Bashar, home from London, where he had been practicing ophthalmology. There would be no more of that. Bashar would be groomed for dictatorship.

And he wound up killing many more than Hafez—no slouch in the killing department—ever dreamed of.

Would there have been a third Assad, had that regime not fallen in December 2024? Yes, probably. Bashar’s firstborn—named Hafez, after Dictator No. 1—was widely seen as the next in line.

In Haiti, François Duvalier—“Papa Doc”—had three daughters and then a son. The first daughter, Marie-Denise, was much like Bushra al-Assad. But she went even farther in government than Bushra.

When the dictator was ailing, Marie-Denise served as his lieutenant, even his proxy. The old man was known to say, “Clear it with Denise” (as he called her). “She’s in charge now.”

But, like Bushra, Marie-Denise was a girl, and Duvalier had that one son, Jean-Claude—nicknamed (not kindly) “Baby Doc.” Jean-Claude could not have been less suited to politics and dictatorship. He himself said that Marie-Denise should take over.

But it had to be Jean-Claude, who held power for 15 years, before being chased to France in an uprising.

The Soviet Union lasted about 70 years. Already, Communist China has lasted longer than that. Communist Cuba, which began on January 1, 1959, is nearing that mark. North Korea, like Communist China, has passed it.

In Children of Monsters, I wrote, “Whether Jong-un will be the last dictator from his family, no one can know. It seems unlikely the dynasty can continue. Then again, it seemed unlikely that it could endure, strangling North Korea, for as long as it has.”

Last year, I interviewed, and wrote about, Kim Yumi, a North Korean defector. One of the things that motivated her defection relates to this business of dynasty.

“A key moment for Kim Yumi came in November 2022,” I wrote, “when Kim Jong-un presented his daughter to the public for the first time.” Kim Yumi noticed a couple of things. And I will keep quoting from my article:

“Kim Ju-ae had Western-style clothes and a haircut to match. This was reflective of her immense privilege. Also, military officials—senior men—were bowing to her. Evidently, the dictatorship would continue, unto the fourth generation. There was no end in sight.”

This was tremendously demoralizing to Kim Yumi.

Yes, there is no end in sight. But how many really and truly saw the end of the Soviet Union coming? Paul Nitze, the great diplomat who knew as much about the Soviet Union as anybody, did not. (He told me so.)

I grew up with countries called “East Germany” and “West Germany.” Günther Herbig, for example, was an “East German conductor.” Young people may marvel at this, but when we started saying “Germany” and “German,” in 1990, the words felt very strange in my mouth.

We can hope that the Koreas will reunite someday—on democratic terms.

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